WORKING PAPERS The Spirituality of Snowboarding: A Research Project WORKING PAPER NO 8 Reverend Neil Elliot MAY 2003
The Spirituality of snowboarding: A Research Project Reverend Neil Elliot Anglican Chaplain at University of Central England ISBN 0904354520 Reverend Neil Elliot has worked as an electronic engineer, lecturer and is now the Anglican Chaplain at the University of Central England. He holds degrees in Engineering, Theology and Islamic Studies and is currently studying part-time for a PhD at UCE. Neil writes first hand about snowboarding as he has been enjoying the sport for the past six years. Email www.neil.elliot@uce.ac.uk Abstract Soul riding is a term used within the vocabulary of snowboard culture. This working paper explains why and how the term has formed the core of a study on the spirituality of snowboarding, and what the significance of this concept might be for a sociological understanding of developments in religion within contemporary culture.
Preface Why am I researching the Spirituality of Snowboarding? I am both a religious professional and a snowboarder. For the last six years I have been an ordained clergyperson in the Church of England, and I am currently the full time Anglican Chaplain to the University of Central England. I have been a committed Christian for a much longer time, but the period of my ordination has coincided with a change in my self-identification within the Christian church. For most of my Christian life I would have identified myself as broadly an evangelical ; for the last six years I have described myself as essentially a post-modern Christian. This change has been promoted by my increasing awareness of the extent to which my religious/spiritual life has been influenced by the paradigm shift in surrounding culture from the modern to the post-modern. This has certainly been evident in the wider church, but has not been recognised as such within the church. My ordination also coincided with my interest in snowboarding, and for the last six years I have spent two weeks a year snowboarding, as well as using local dry ski slopes and indoor ski slopes. In this time I have achieved a reasonable level of competence, certainly sufficient to ride away from the pistes, and to go into the untracked backcountry with a guide. I have also become aware of, and part of, snowboard culture, and it was in this context that I heard of the concept of soul riding. The term soul riding intrigued me, as it seemed to offer an insight into contemporary spirituality and culture. I believe that such insight is severely lacking within the church, which often seems preoccupied with internal debates, and which seems to have little contact with or understanding of the culture surrounding it, and of which it is a part. One of the most significant features of the shift in culture as far as the church has been concerned is the process of secularisation of culture, most evident in the persistent falls in church attendance. However, this has been matched by a widespread development of interest in spirituality, as opposed to religion, often termed sacralisation. It seems that whilst many today are actively averse to contact with the church and distrustful of the church and its dogmas and factions, there is still a fascination with the nonmaterial facets of life. In the latter part of my curacy, and the first few months of my time at UCE, I studied for an MA in Islamic Studies (at Birmingham University). This gave me the confidence and a desire to want to study contemporary British culture, and to develop my sociological understanding, rather than to become a theology or Islamic specialist. The opportunity of examining the concept of soul riding seemed to bring a variety of threads together, as well as giving me an insight into the functioning of UCE from the students perspective. I would also venture that the research is post-modern in praxis as well as in theory. My study of the spirituality of snowboarding is both playful and serious. It evokes a mixture of incredulity, amusement, and a frequent
oh, cool, from those who hear about it. Some have suggested that I am primarily in it for the fieldwork opportunities, which I cannot deny are attractive. Overall, I believe the study is one that embodies that which it is ultimately studying, ie. contemporary culture. This is both a delight and a danger as I strive to preserve academic rigour amongst the reflexivity of dealing with subjects I love. The Issue - can snowboarding have spirituality? Snowboarding is one of the newest sports, and one of the fastest growing. In the roughly 20 years of its existence it has become an Olympic sport, and in some areas, has become the majority snow sport. It has shed its underground, rebellious youth image and become a sport for all ages. However, it retains a sense of cool, of association with danger, and of being part of a lifestyle rather than a weekend or holiday activity. Within the cultural vocabulary of snowboarding is the theme of soul riding, associated with the freeriding, rather than the racing or freestyle (trick riding) elements of snowboarding. The soul rider is a somewhat iconic, aspirational, figure - the completely competent snowboarder, unafraid of the dangers of backcountry snowboarding. Soul riders are not seeking the glamour of video and magazine coverage, but the peace and solitude of riding out of bounds. The professional soul rider is able to spend their complete life riding untracked powder far from the crowded city streets or resort trails. Yet, the activity is accessible to the majority of snowboarders, for the level of technique required is within the grasp of the average snowboarder and many resorts include some untracked areas within their boundaries. Thus, soul riding is both aspirational and achievable. The existence of the term soul rider begs the question as to whether there is a distinct and recognisable spirituality within snowboarding. It is possible that the soul of soul riding is on a level with soul food, or that soul riding is merely a media construct intended to sell more product or to advance the aims of the snowboard industry in some way. Thus, the question of the significance of the term soul riding is key to understanding this evolving element of contemporary western culture. Significance The questions being considered here have wider echoes than just snowboarding and they are particularly pertinent in the cultural context of contemporary religion and spirituality. Religion, particularly Christianity, is in numerical decline throughout the western world. This is more advanced in Europe than in the United States, but it is a common factor. This may be connected with a number of sociological factors commonly associated with post modernity ie. suspicion of metanarratives, suspicion of institutions and of authorities of any kind. However, it is widely accepted by sociologists that assumptions of a secularisation of society were misplaced. Whilst church and other religious adherence is shrinking, there is a continuing, if not growing, interest in
spirituality. People may not want church, but they are not content with a purely materialist view of life - they want to believe in something more, even if they do not know - or want to know - what that something is 1. The overt reference to spirituality in soul riding is an intriguing example of this interest in non-religious spirituality. It is possible that soul riding refers to a spiritual experience of some kind, maybe incorporating a number of elements which are also located in other forms of spirituality. The acceptance, and elevation, of soul riding within this new sport/lifestyle of snowboarding may be some kind of indication of the developing and emerging spiritualities which could increasingly form an alternative to the mainstream religions and religious systems. It is particularly interesting that this concept should emerge within the sport of snowboarding. Snowboarding may be seen as a particularly post-modern sport in a number of ways. Firstly, it is very recent, emerging within the last 20 years. It is a sport of the developed nations, available to those with access to particular consumer products and high capital investments in alpine areas. It is a global sport and promotes a globalised culture in its products, media, and competitions. Snowboarding is perceived as one of the few lifestyle sports, a term interpreted by the sports industry as a sport which will sell a range of lifestyle products (eg clothes, shoes) to non-participants as well as participants, on the basis that the sport is cool. Other sports, which share this honour, include surfing and skateboarding, with which snowboarding has close links. Snowboarding has an ambivalent relationship with corporate industry. Whilst it values the products of the industry, it prefers to avoid too much engagement with the large multinational sports companies. The biggest snowboard products companies are unknown outside the snowboard fraternity. Multinationals generally sell snowboard products under less well known brand names. Snowboarding also has a particularly noncompetitive ethos. There has been considerable controversy about the inclusion of snowboarding in the Olympic games, and a number of the world s best snowboarders have chosen not to compete. Snowboard culture is reflected in a number of magazines and web sites which are strongly linked to similar media in the skateboarding and surfing cultures. Thus, snowboarding is both global but also a subculture with a strong sense of identity. It is heavily consumerised, but wishes to see itself as independent of the multinationals. It is a sport which can give its adherents a strong and wider sense of identity - a lifestyle. Two particularly important themes within this lifestyle are the spiritual self-understanding of soul riding and the soul rider s commitment to this particular path of spirituality. If soul riding is a spirituality without explicit ritual and explicit language, in other words a spirituality without a culture of its own, then it is a spirituality without a language to communicate and define its experiences. This is a via negativa, an apophatic spirituality, where spiritual experience may be mentioned, but cannot be discussed because there are no words with which to do so. This may, in turn, be a sub-conscious popular response to the increasing and confusing pluralism of western cultures. No longer is it acceptable for one to say my religion is right and yours is wrong. We are required to accept that each person s personal choice of spirituality (including that of having no spirituality) is a 1 Cf., Marsh (Ed.), 2000, Sociology, Prentice Hall; Hamilton M 1995, The Sociology of Religion, Routledge; Woodhead,L & Heelas
valid choice. Soul riding accepts this and affirms that all who choose this path are experiencing a valid spirituality, but that they need no language to communicate the experience, for there is no need and little possibility of doing so. No priest is necessary to validate the experience for the soul rider - they validate it for themselves. Soul riding makes no claims of exclusivity or supremacy. For some people, at some time in their lives, it may be the appropriate means for them to experience something of the spiritual. At other times they may experience the spiritual in a different, maybe a completely different, way. No long-term commitment is required, no exclusivity is claimed. This too may have its parallel in many contemporary forms of spiritualities, from the new ecumenism of Christians with no denominational commitment to the searching of the wide varieties of new age spirituality. One final area of the consideration focuses on establishing the development of the idea of soul riding. As noted, it is at least possible that the whole area may be substantially a media or snowboard industry creation, or at least an inflation of the concept of a very small minority. The motive for such an inflation might simply be to extend the appeal of snowboarding beyond the skate kids, who formed the first rush of adherents to the sport, to older, more mature snow sports participants and potential participants. In this cynical view, soul riding is merely a marketing ploy. But even this implies a certain cachet to the idea of the soul rider. It signifies that soul is a concept which sells product - both equipment and holidays. Soul becomes an aspirational quality which marketers attempt to attach to their products, and the snowboard (and wider) media become a part of this marketing ploy. The study of soul riding I am currently undertaking is, therefore, significant for those who work in the fields of religion, sociology and culture, and media. As part of the study of religion it examines what may be an example of a contemporary religious movement, one that is notable for potentially being a religionless spirituality. In the field of sociology it continues understanding of the contemporary sacralisation of society alongside and parallel to the secularisation of society; and it works at a sociological understanding of spirituality rather than a purely religious one. In the field of media studies it looks at how the media can influence the spirituality of a cultural group and examines the relationship between the media and the participants in a subculture. In all of this the study has the particular advantage of being engaged with a relatively small, although geographically diverse, population within mainstream western culture. As such it is a population which mirrors attitudes within a much wider section of that culture. Methodology The study is grounded within the academic discipline of the sociology of religion. It would have been possible for a study in this area to be alternatively focused as theology, linguistics, or philosophy. Each of these backgrounds would have given a different emphasis to the study. The emphasis of the sociology of religion is, P. (Eds.), Religion in Modern Times, Blackwell.
one of examining culture as it is. This study is phenomenological and ethnographic and, whilst there is the intention of drawing conclusions and hence theorising from the study, the study is qualitative rather than quantitative in any sense. The classic methodology for such an ethnography would be that of participant observer. However, in this instance this would not be appropriate as the primary methodology. In this study of soul riding it is the riders perception of the activity which is of greatest significance, rather than the activity itself. Thus, this may also be described as a phenomenological ethnography. As the research is intended to discover what the riders think they are doing, the best way of doing this is by interview, thus allowing the riders to speak for themselves. In order to allow this, the interviews should be semi-structured. They will cover areas such as: the personal history of the snowboarder, focusing on their snowboarding and their religious and social contexts; snowboarding experiences which have been particularly significant for them; their understanding of spirituality and of soul riding and the connections between snowboarding and spirituality. The participants in these interviews will be identified through a number of contact points including the Internet, British snowboard groups and professional snowboarders. Initial research suggests that the great majority of snowboarders are young white males and the study will reflect this. However, there will also be interviews with non-white and female snowboarders. The interviews will be backed up by some observation of soul riding to establish whether the self-perception of riders is matched by more objective judgement. Further triangulation of the research will be obtained by the survey of snowboard media of various kinds. The evidence may be from magazines, books, Internet web pages or discussion groups, snowboard videos or even from computer games. These sources may also provide links to those in the snowboard industry who may provide useful data. This documentary evidence will provide its own insights into the concept of soul riding. Academic Issues As noted, a central debate within the sociology of religion, and a key area for this study, is the noted phenomenon of secularisation and sacralisation. Secularisation is widely interpreted as being a result of the influence of the scientific metanarrative, and the lack of relevance of religion to contemporary culture. However, while there is no question that there has been (and continues to be) a dramatic decrease in church attendance in Europe, in the USA and the former eastern block countries church attendance has survived, and in the non-western world religions continue to thrive. These contrasting trends have, in fact, led to a degree of academic confusion and there is debate as to proper interpretation of them. To further confuse things, secularisation has an antithesis, namely sacralisation in modern times. This is the increasing popularity of spirituality within western culture 2. Besides New Age spirituality there is also an 2 See note one above.
emerging possibility of a non-theocentric civil religion or secular spirituality with which those of any faith can engage in times of communal crisis, for example after disasters and the death of significant public figures 3. Where once there might have been a general agreement about the nature of spirituality, the variety of forms of religion and non-religious spirituality is now leading to a variety of definitions. The traditional definitions which would include references to experiences of a narrowly defined God or Gods have now been widened to encompass any experience of ultimate reality, godhead, or transcendence. There are now those who talk about spirituality being primarily concerned with wholeness of life, or one s meaning or purpose in life. Once spirituality might have been expected to include ascetic elements and progressions defined by religious institutions; now, some wish to define spirituality as essentially personal and concerned with one s values. This change in the definitions may be seen in a variety of fields. Spirituality is being studied by the medical profession, for example, in response to the increasing prevalence of non-clinical mental health issues they are facing 4. Educationalists too are looking to define spirituality and incorporate it into the syllabus as a significant source of values, identity, and citizenship 5. A recent survey was conducted by Hay and Hunt at Nottingham University through a series of focus groups and interviews with people from a Nottingham suburb. Their results reinforce the suggestion that there is a confusion about the meaning of spiritual. There is a widespread conviction among their respondents that there is something there, but they were uneasy about saying what it is. Many of those involved had a spirituality which might be described as being in quest mode 6. Tom Beaudoin subtitles his book on spirituality and music culture in a post-modern context The irreverent spiritual quest of Generation X 7. In view of the above, the intention of this research is not to impose or to seek to discover a definition of spirituality. It will be to look for common elements which may be interpreted as being spiritual within the experience of snowboarding, and in particular of soul riding. Initial research has suggested that these elements may include: awareness of mortality and dealing with or facing the prospect of death; themes of freedom and escape from normal life; experiences of transcendence and detachment including out of the body experiences; renewed senses of community, senses of identity and significance; the discovery of meaning in/of life; a closeness to and awareness of nature; a commitment to a set of ethics; finally, a rediscovery of playing. In seeking to contribute to the growing understandings of the meaning and significance of spirituality within contemporary culture, this study will be following a number of other studies into non-religious spiritualities, including studies into the spirituality of nightclubbing, the spiritualities of certain music sub-cultures, the spirituality of rock climbing, and projects concerned with new age spiritualities. Professor Philip Sheldrake 3 J.Richards, S.Wilson, L.Woodhead (Ed.), 1999, Diana, Making of a media saint, IB Taurus. 4 B.Barnum, Spirituality in nursing, Springer, 1996; J.Harrison, 1993, Spirituality in nursing practice, Avebury; H.Orchard (Ed.), 2001, Spirituality in health care contexts, Kingsley. 5 National Curriculum Council, 1993, Spiritual and Moral development. 6 D.Hay and K.Hunt, 2000, Understanding the spirituality of people who don t go to church, Nottingham University, Nottingham, P24ff
asserts that Spirituality is beginning to take shape as a substantial field with a special, but not exclusive, relationship to theology 8 The formal aims of the research are: to discover whether there are common experiences among snowboarders who identify with soul riding ; to examine what these snowboarders mean by soul riding ; and to establish any commonalities with other forms of non-institutional spirituality. This may be broken down to a simple research question which is in what sense do soul riding snowboarders see what they do as being spiritual? Although I intend to be open to the possibility that they see very little spirituality in snowboarding, my initial research suggests that this is not the case. As this spirituality is post-modern in nature it is not likely to be simply modelled or described. Instead it is likely that the data collected will show a range of elements which may be included as the spiritual content of soul riding. It is my hope that this research will raise further questions about the nature of spirituality and the future of institutional religion within a post-modern context. I also expect that the research will reveal the extent to which the media is able to influence, and is influenced by, a form of spirituality. This is significant in understanding the developing area of spirituality within post-modern culture. 7 T.Beaudoin, 1998, Virtual Faith, Jossey-Bass. 8 P. Sheldrake, 1999, Spirituality as an Academic Discipline, in A.Thatcher (Ed.), 1999, Spirituality and the Curriculum, Cassell.